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Shadow of the Ruhnama

I watched this Finnish documentary (which first appeared in 2008, and is now available in full on YouTube) on the Ruhnama, the “holy book” that came to define the dictatorship of Saparmurat Niyazov, the first president (for life) of Turkmenistan, with relish. David Remnick wrote about Niyazov and the Ruhnama in the magazine a few years ago, calling Turkmenistan under their spell “a cruel blend of Kim Jong Il’s North Korea and L. Frank Baum’s Oz.” The statue above, which stands in Ashgabat, the capital, illustrates the point nicely: every night at 8 P.M., the covers swing open and an audio recording of a passage is played, along with a video.

The documentary, called “Shadow of the Holy Book,” goes inside the crazy, examining schools where Ruhnama is taught, mosques (Turkmenistan is a mostly Muslim nation) forced to display the book alongside the Koran, and huge official ceremonies where hundreds of singing Turkmen perform choreography with the book in hand. It also provides a brief history of Turkmenistan leading up to Niyazov’s rule. But the real objective of the film is to question the corporations who, eager to do business with Turkmenistan (which has rich oil and gas reserves), have financed translations of the book into several languages (including English—you can read the entire text online).

The bits that fascinate me the most explore Niyazov’s embrace of a book as a means to power. A scholar provides an explanation: “Niyazov was somewhat illiterate. He couldn’t read or write Turkmen or Russian properly. People who have disabilities, for example illiteracy, want to be seen as geniuses. This was probably what got him started.” Another posits: “If he had had any sense of the kind of tyranny that he was perpetuating, he would have been unable to write these words or allow them to be published.”